Microsoft confirms Kinect release line-up

Seventeen games launching with accessory in US, nineteen in Europe

Larry Hryb has announced the full line up of seventeen US Kinect launch titles on his Major Nelson blog, with an announcement on European games due later today.

The full list features nine sports, dance and fitness titles, a number of minigame compilations and a few traditional games, including Sonic Free Riders and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Fitness games due on release day are Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout, EA Sports Active 2 and Zumba Fitness. Sports games include Kinect Sports, MotionSports and Deca Sports, and the two dancing titles are Dance Central and DanceMasters.

Also available at launch will be first-party releases Kinect Adventures, Kinectimals and Kinect Joy Ride, joined by Game Party: In Motion, Adrenalin Misfits and Fighters Uncaged.

Hryb was also keen to highlight the fact that some retailers have been reporting that pre-order allocations of Kinect have sold out already.

"I am getting reports of many retailers being sold out of their Kinect pre-order allotment, so if you have not placed your order yet you may want to take care of that," Hryb told Major Nelson readers.

Elsewhere, the New York Post is reporting that the marketing budget assigned to Kinect is $500 million, equal to that of the original Xbox.

"Kinect is the largest, most integrated marketing initiative in Xbox history, bigger than its launch," Xbox global marketing communications manager Robert Matthews told the NYP. "We are going to be spending millions to launch this globally."

The article also indicates that Microsoft has founded advertising partnerships with Burger King, Pepsi and Kelloggs and that Kinect will be staging a takeover on YouTube's homepage for the launch.

UPDATE

The European launch line-up has now been confirmed, with two extra games accompanying Kinect's release on 26 November: Get Fit With Mel B and Dance Paradise. Full list below.

Kinect Adventures - 10 Nov

Kinect Sports - 10 Nov

Kinectimals - 10 Nov

Game Party: In Motion - 26 Nov

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 The Videogame - 19 Nov

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved - 10 Nov

Dance Central - 10 Nov

The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout - 10 Nov

DanceMasters - 10 Nov

EA Sports Active 2 - 19 Nov

Zumba Fitness - 26 Nov

MotionSports - 10 Nov

Sports Island Freedom - Nov 26

Kinect Joy Ride- 10 Nov

Crossboard 7 - 10 Nov

Fighters Uncaged - 10 Nov

Sonic Free Rider - 10 Nov

Get Fit With Mel B - 26 Nov - Europe Only

Dance Paradise - 26 Nov - Europe Only

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Given the lineup not sure that works out as they want to. What casual gamer will pay 150 for Kinect, plus possibly additional 150 minimum for the console? And as we all know a big chunk of early adopters are core gamers and I can`t imagine a 20 something core gamer going out on the launch day to buy Kinect and Kinectimals for 200 bucks when instead they can go out and buy games like CoD, Fallout and so on and so on. There just so many actually good games coming out now so why should anybody who has at least a bit of a clue about gaming spend 150 bucks on that during that time period?

Looks like it`s getting interesting with Kinect, MS appears to have an embargo so no review can be released before the launch as well as being very unwilling on sending any Kinect and Games to reviewers. That`s very interesting given that this practice are only done either way for games to not get any story spoiled prior to the release or because the product is just not very good and given kinect is hardware and none of the games are story driven I doubt it`s because of the first option.

Quick Correction: it's Sonic Free Riders (and it was actually fun when I tried it out a few weeks back).

Also.. the New York Post as a source? Really? That Damn Unimpressive Murdoch Paper is a total right-wing rag here in the city with its constant anti-government rantings, constant focus on sexing up news for the front page and that dopey gossip/opinion centric "news" slant. Fair and balanced my A double S...

That and they make some ridiculous factual errors from time to time.

Feh - I guess they have one or two actual reporters working there after all...

And yeah, I'm trying to get a Kinect review unit and haven't heard a peep from a Microsoft rep. Paradoxically, there are plenty of celebs getting one and a stack of games as well as contests all over the damn place where they're giving them out like there's no tomorrow come launch day and beyond. Obviously, the Joe Gamer types won't be as hard on the product as jaded press members... thing is, I'm NOT jaded.